As mobile phones and other mobile electronic devices become more technologically advanced and include more features, the cost to purchase these mobile devices increases, as does the cost to replace them should they break. To prophylactically protect such devices from damage or breakage, protective cases have been devised to reduce the risk that a mobile device breaks should it be dropped or otherwise exposed to an impact force.
In particular, two types of materials have generally been employed to reduce the impact force on a mobile device, namely, elastic and resilient materials that absorb impact forces (“soft cases”), and fracture-resistant plastics (“hard cases”). Mobile device cases typically include one or the other of these materials, or include a softer resilient case surrounding a harder plastic case. The resultant device cases often suffer from protection limitations and a low quality user experience. For example, cases exclusively composed of high durometer plastics, or similarly hard materials, often include jagged or sharp corners providing an uncomfortable feeling in the user's hand. Further, high durometer plastic cases, while lending overall durability to the case, often rupture at connection points on two-piece clam shelled cases owing to a lack of resiliency, potentially exposing the mobile device to an impact force.
Conversely, soft resilient cases such as those made from rubber or other elastomeric materials, while providing impact protection, are often large and unwieldy, which mitigates the benefits of having a slim profile mobile device. Further, rubber and other elastomeric materials have high coefficients of friction with a user's hand, and with many surfaces on which the mobile device would be placed, for example, clothing, a hand-bag, or a desk, reducing the mobility of the device as elastomeric materials tend to stick to a surface. As a result, mobile device cases composed of rubber or elastomers, while providing impact protection, may not be aesthetically desirable to consumers, and users often remove the elastomeric case leaving the mobile device either unprotected or vulnerable in plastic cases with minimal impact resistance.
It is therefore desirable to have a mobile device case that incorporates or integrates both impact resistant features of a soft case and the durability features of a hard case into a single easy to use and durable case. It is also desirable to provide for the ability of the user to attach and remove a softer impact absorbing outer case to a harder inner case such that a mobile device is protected and the case remains durable and resilient whether or not the outer case is attached.